Music Theory Commons^™

African American Sacred Music And The Romantic Aesthetic, Brooksie Harrington

English Faculty Working Papers

Gospel music affects every aspect of African American culture, and the similarities between the African American sacred music aesthetic and the Romantic aesthetic share a theme of religiosity that is contained in the correlative of the mythopoetic “seam.” This seam meshes together analysis that explores the natural sublime, as suggested in the writings of such scholars as William Wordsworth, Pierre Proudhon, Samuel Coleridge, James Weldon Johnson, Henry L. Gates, and Anthony Heilbut.

Boethian Variations: Musical Thought In Sir Orfeo, Troilus And Criseyde, And Robert Henryson’S Orpheus And Eurydice, Joshua T. Parks

Masters Theses

This study approaches three poems from the late medieval British Isles—the Middle English Breton lay Sir Orfeo, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, and Robert Henryson’s Orpheus and Eurydice—through the lens of medieval music theory. The most important authority for medieval music theorists was the late antique philosopher Boethius, who held to a Neoplatonic philosophy of music that valued reason, theory, and contemplation of the music of the spheres. Later medieval theorists cited Boethius extensively while also adapting his thought to suit their own purposes. In particular, the early fourteenth-century French theorist Johannes de Grocheio, influenced by Aristotle, departed …

Prescribed Freedom, Proscribed Freedom: Compositional And Improvisational Balances In Jazz, Andrew W. Saliba

Masters Theses

Jazz is a recent and flexible art form, rooted in the twin musical strains of occidental canon and folkloric African-American music. From its genesis, jazz musicians have had the difficult task of reconciling these seemingly opposite musical parents while simultaneously building a new musical canon that respects and upholds its past, even as it celebrates new individual voices. Like any multifaceted challenge this balancing of elements has not always gone smoothly, and attempts to codify the delineation and categorization of jazz remain controversial even now. There is additional challenge in defining the nature of “free” improvised music. While free music …

Emergent Formal Functions In Schubert's Piano Sonatas, Yiqing Ma

LSU Master's Theses

Drawing on the work of Janet Schmalfeldt and William Caplin, I explore the way in which emergent formal function determines our perception of form in four piano sonata movements by Schubert: D.840, D.845, D.850 and D.894. Janet Schmalfeldt adapts the notion of formal function to directly address the dialectic between “being” and “becoming,” approaching formal function from a phenomenological perspective. Building on her work, I define emergent formal function as a formal function that is conditioned by how the listener’s expectations change. It is an important analytical tool that helps us understand how and why Schubert’s sonata forms depart from …

Audio Quality As Content: Everyday Criticism Of The Lo-Fi Format, Elizabeth Newton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the matter of authenticity with respect to audio recordings. In the early 1990s, the term “lo-fi” (“low-fidelity”) emerged as a label used to categorize many different types of popular music, indicating widespread fascination with what I call audio quality, the perceived character of an audio recording. I define audio quality as the relationship between content and mediation, which varies greatly by circumstance. My archival research of zines, press releases, and correspondence examines this relationship in three case studies: Wu-Tang Clan, Bratmobile, and Elliott Smith. I posit the lo-fi format as a critical structure that emerged in …

Corporeal Analysis: The Performing Body As Analytic Site, Laura Cocks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A framework of corporeal analysis posits that the physicality of the performer can be construed as a primary analytical parameter in a work. This dissertation seeks to set up such a method of analysis largely through anecdata and autoethnography with the aim of eliciting a deeper space for additional performer-driven analyses that prioritize the bodily knowledge of performers and their physical understandings of a work. Centering around David Bird’s 2013 work for solo piccolo and “no-less-than twenty-nine spatialized piccolos,” Atolls, three main aspects of corporeal analysis will be explored. These are: performance physicality as expressive connective tissue between flutist …

Object-Oriented Musicology: Some Implications Of Graham Harman's Philosophy For Music Theory, History, And Criticism, Eric Taxier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation brings the ideas of the philosopher Graham Harman (b. 1968) into a musicological context. His “object-oriented ontology” is widely known in continental philosophy, but it has not yet entered rigorous contact with musicology. Certain factors pose difficulties at first glance, such as Harman’s focus on metaphysical issues (originating in his critique of Martin Heidegger) and his rehabilitation of the widely criticized concept of aesthetic autonomy. But these are also sources of novelty that could make an object-oriented encounter with musicology fruitful. In the first chapter, I outline the main features of Harman’s thought. He critiques assumptions about the …

Analyzing Perceptions Of Music From A Songwriting Perspective, Jackson Stephen Reynosa

Communication Studies

This study seeks to understand listeners’ perceptions of music from a generational and songwriting approach. A total of 123 participants aged 18 and older took part in an open-ended survey design that measured their subjective music preferences. Four different sections tested participants’ music taste, music tied to generations, an original song made by the researcher, and songwriting in a holistic sense. It was found that participants exercised individualism and authenticity in their responses throughout. By using the Uses and Gratifications Theory, it is explainable that people listened and sought out music for their own unique reasons. By applying Mood Management …

Singing With Strangers: A Feasibility Study Examining The Effect Of Interpersonal Familiarity On Social Bonding During Group Singing, Molly Grettenberger

Masters Theses

Social isolation and loneliness have become major health concerns in today’s world, and the healthcare field needs effective approaches to ameliorating the effects of social isolation and loneliness and increasing opportunities for social bonding. Group singing may be one such approach. This feasibility study focused specifically on interpersonal familiarity during shortterm, small-group singing and its effect on the subjective experience of social bonding. A between-groups design and group interviews were used to examine the subjective experience of social bonding resulting from singing. Two groups of four, including one familiar group and one group of strangers, engaged in a brief group …

The Limits Of Indeterminacy: The Performance And Analysis Of Selected Indeterminate Compositions By John Cage And Earle Brown, Drake R. Andersen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study elucidates the relationship between notation, performance practice, and musical realization in several indeterminate compositions by John Cage and Earle Brown. While both Cage and Brown emphasized the multiplicity of possible outcomes in these works, the distinct configurations of fixed and unfixed elements in each ensure particular kinds of musical results to the exclusion of others. In tracing the musical limits and possibilities of each work, this research project also seeks to correct a longstanding belief that indeterminate music is not meaningfully responsive to the tools of music theory.

Chapter one historicizes the emergence, presentation, and reception of indeterminate …

Songs And The Soil, Mark Garry, Louise Reddy

Books/Book Chapters

Published in conjuction with an exhibition. The exhibition engages with the subjects of landscape and music/sound—exploring each element from historical, social and culturally associative perspectives; where landscape is recognised as a fluid term articulating physical space, idealised space and social space that reflects a convergence of physical processes and cultural meaning, and where song act as a response to, or archive, of personal, historical or socio-political instances. Several works engage landscape and musical sound intersect. The exhibition integrates a broad range of media,positions and responses to these research subjects; including two film works, a six-hour soundtrack for a room, sonic …

Balance And Motivic Unity In The Finale Of Robert Schumann's Piano Sonata, Op. 11, Robert B. Carlson

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Robert Schumann’s first piano sonata, op. 11, is of great importance within his compositional output, but it is faced with undue neglect in performance and in-depth analytical study. Though he has been criticized for his inability to handle large forms, this sonata exemplifies a thorough sense of design, unity, and intricacy in his writing. There exists a considerable dearth of analysis that focuses specifically on the voice-leading structure of this sonata. Such an approach would shed light on the way Schumann engages with larger structures.

The first three movements of this work set a precedent of organic self-awareness in the …

The Performer As Analyst In The Piano Sonata Opus 12 By Jean Sibelius, Jesse Tingle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines and models the process of analysis as a means for performers, particularly pianists, to engage with the large-scale organizational features of musical works, using the Piano Sonata, Opus 12 by Jean Sibelius as a case study. The unique character and structure of each of the three movements suggests an equally wide range of approaches to analysis, including studies in sonata form, construction of a musical narrative based on external source material, and the use of concepts from Sonata Theory to explain the logic of a highly unconventional tonal and thematic design. The analyses are interwoven with a …

Nadia Boulanger’S Fantaisie Variée Pour Piano Et Orchestre A Study Of A Significant Unpublished Piece, Sarah Elias

Dissertations

The research consists of a brief historical and biographical overview of Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), a main focus of a thematic and motivic analysis of her work Fantaisie variée pour piano et orchestre, along with touching upon the influences of Fauré, Debussy, Widor, Reger, and Franck on its composition, and a mention of the process of obtaining the Fantaisie from the Centre international Nadia et Lili Boulanger. Boulanger produced works in a variety of genres, including: a fugue; more than thirty songs for voice and piano; two completed works for solo piano; three works for organ; several chamber works; three works …

Negative Harmony: The Shadow Of Harmonic Polarity On Contemporary Composition Techniques, Debora Haller

Composition/Recording Projects

If we are to blame any composer for the puzzling question ‘What is Negative Harmony?’ that caused a worldwide itch on the creative minds of many young composers in this century, it would be Jacob Collier, who introduced the world with prodigious, colorful harmonies upon releasing his first album “In My Room” in 2016. Provided with brief answers during interviews with June Lee that explained the concept of tones and chords being mirrored on an axis center in the opposite direction, the surface of Negative Harmony was exposed but led to even more confusion. Prompted by even more questions, the …

A Bright Size Transformation: Examining Pat Metheny's Improvisatory Evolution Through Select Original Compositions From The Album Bright Size Life (1976), Lee Heerspink

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

Pat Metheny has consistently been one of the most widely celebrated and prominent jazz guitarists from the mid-1970s to present day. Over the course of Metheny’s 45-year career, he has accumulated 44 albums as a band leader, 20 Grammy awards, and numerous “Best Jazz Guitarist” awards from DownBeat and JazzTimes. Despite the general sources, articles and interviews conducted about Metheny’s life and music, there is a lack of scholarly research which addresses how Pat Metheny’s improvisatory approach has changed throughout the course of his career.

This document provides a better understanding of Pat Metheny’s improvisatory evolution with transcriptions, analyses, …

In Time Gone By: Song Cycle For Baritone And Six Players, Bryan Grosbach

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

In Time Gone By is a song cycle for Baritone vocalist and Pierrot Ensemble + percussion that explores the value of life being a byproduct of its finitude. Only during the most vulnerable and difficult events of that life can self-realization occur. These topics are wrapped into a “love-story” narrative crafted from select poems from Chamber Music by James Joyce and select quotes from the prose Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne. Using intervallic focus as a tool for development, the piece transitions from sparse quintal harmony to lush tertian harmony as a musical metaphor for the self-realization of …

Bach-To Ysaÿe: History And Performance Considerations Of Sonata No. 2, Mai Vestergaard

Honors Scholar Theses

Eugene Ysaÿe’s Violin Sonata No. 2 has been influenced by the baroque music of Johann Sebastian Bach and the musical techniques brought forth by the Franco-Belgian Violin School. Each sonata movement has musical elements incorporating virtuosic techniques such as ponticello, chromaticism, and emphasis of the tri-tone. The performer draws attention to the audience by using advanced performance practices to change the piece's color and story. Ysaÿe engages with these ideas to share a musical and personal journey through each sonata movement, dedicating it to Jacques Thibaud. This violin sonata is a pinnacle to the violin repertoire, emphasizing the importance of …

Escaping Time: Messiaen’S Musical Language, Religious Symbolism, And Undermining Time In Quatour Pour La Fin Du Temps, Sarra Elizabeth Hey-Folick

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Scholars, including Robert Fallon and Wilfred Mellers, understand Olivier Messiaen’s Quatour pour la fin du Temps through the lens of war and captivity. Written during Messiaen’s imprisonment in the German prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII A during World War II, Quatour portrays the biblical “end of time” described in the book of Revelations. Messiaen drew connections between Quatour and the apocalypse with references to the angel of the apocalypse, the abyss, and the end of time. Messiaen, along with Étienne Pasquier, Jean Le Boulaire, and Henri Akoka premiered Quatour on January, 15th 1941, for their fellow prisoners and guards …

Tonal Expectations Defining Narrative Archetypes, Seth Weesner

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the contributions of tonal analysis to narrative readings of three nineteenth-century pieces. The method used originates from the work of two theorists, Byron Almén and Fred Lerdahl. Almén’s 2008 book, A Theory of Musical Narrative, outlines narrative archetypes. Lerdahl’s 2004 book, Tonal Pitch Space, provides a sophisticated approach to tonal analysis. These methods are combined to analyze striking modulations in Robert Schumann’s “Dein Angesicht” Op. 127, no. 2, tonal ambiguity in Johannes Brahms’s “Der Kranz” Op. 84, no. 2, and the lack of tonal closure in Gabriel Fauré’s “Hymne” Op. 7, no. 2. These striking …